Piero Zennaro

Molecular Markers of Biomass Burning in Arctic Aerosols

Biomass burning is one of the most important sources of organic matter in the atmosphere as it affects the absorption and scattering of solar radiation, creates cloud condensation nuclei and possibly influences ice and snow albedo. Here we created and validated an analytical method using HPLC/(-)-ESI-MS/MS to determine phenolic compounds (PCLCs): vanillic acid, isovanillic acid, homovanillic acid, syringic acid, syringaldehyde, ferulic acid, p-coumaric acid, and coniferyl aldehyde at trace levels in particulate matter. We analyzed eighteen high-volume air samples from Ny Ålesund (Svalbard) collected during the boreal spring and summer of 2010. Biomass burning molecules including PCLCs (<0.49 μm, mean atmospheric concentration 6 pg m(-3)), levoglucosan (0.004 to 0.682 ng m(-3)) and acrylamide (32 fg m(-3) to 166 fg m(-3)) were present in the sampled aerosols. Levoglucosan concentrations, an unambiguous cellulose combustion tracer, derived from 2010 Russian fires. PCLCs levels in the Ny Alesund atmosphere in different size fractions reflected both long-range transport linked to biomass burning and a terrigenous local source.

Europe on fire three thousand years ago: Arson or climate?

The timing of initiation of human impacts on the global climate system is actively debated. Anthropogenic effects on the global climate system are evident since the Industrial Revolution, but humans may have altered biomass burning, and hence the climate system, for millennia. We use the specific biomarker levoglucosan to produce the first high-temporal resolution hemispheric reconstruction of Holocene fire emissions inferred from ice core analyses. Levoglucosan recorded in the Greenland North Greenland Eemian ice core significantly increases since the last glacial, resulting in a maximum around ~2.5 ka and then decreasing until the present. Here we demonstrate that global climate drivers fail to explain late Holocene biomass burning variations and that the levoglucosan maximum centered on ~2.5 ka may be due to anthropogenic land clearance.

Water-soluble trace, rare earth elements and organic compounds in Arctic aerosol

We investigated the elemental composition and water-soluble-organic compounds (WSOC) present in size-segregated airborne particulate matter to better understand: (1) the distribution of the water-soluble fraction of trace elements (TE), rare earth elements (REE) and WSOCs among different particulate sizes, and (2) the transport processes of aerosol towards the Arctic zone. Samples were collected at Ny-Alesund in the Svalbard Islands (78°55′07″N, 11°53′30″E) from 19 April to 14 September 2010. Water-soluble TE and REE were measured with the aim of recognising reliable tracers of specific sources, which may prove crucial in cost-effective strategies of air pollution control. The TE and REE content, especially in the finest fractions of aerosols in remote areas, is primarily due to long-range transport. It gives valuable information on the global circulation and on the contribution of human activities to aerosol composition (Birmili et al. in Environ Sci Technol 40:1144–1153, 2006; Fernández-Espinosa et al. in Atmos Environ 38:873–886, 2004; Song et al. in Atmos Environ 35:5277–5286, 2001). On the same samples, we also determined water-soluble organic tracers as specific source indicators: levoglucosan and methoxyphenols from biomass burning, acrylamide from anthropogenic origin and amino acids from primary production. These results were discussed in previous papers (Scalabrin et al. in Atmos Chem Phys 12:10453–10463, 2012; Zangrando et al. in Environ Sci Technol 47:8565–8574, 2013).